With many studios and divisions under Xbox getting affected by recent layoffs, the company has also let go of long-time developer and vice president of Xbox Platform, Kevin LaChapelle. In a LinkedIn post, LaChapelle confirmed that he was laid off from the company after having worked there for 37 years.
LaChapelle is one of the most noteworthy names affected by Xbox’s layoffs, since he oversaw the development of Xbox software “across cloud, console, and PC.” He has also worked on several of the company’s key services, including Cloud Gaming. Fans of the Xbox platform would also recognize his name as being the leader of the team that built out the Xbox Backwards Compatibility Program.
“I will add my name to the list of people who were laid off today at Xbox. This ends my 37 years at Microsoft,” said LaChapelle. “I have worked in many different parts of the company, and I will say my fondest memories are of leading the team of very talented engineers who built the Xbox Backward Compatibility program. Sitting in the auditorium when Phil announced the program at E3 2015 was incredible. The audience’s reaction was unbelievable. I followed that with leading the team who created our Cloud Gaming product.”
The Xbox Backwards Compatibility Program was launched in 2015 and has been quite popular since. The program involved engineers working to ensure that Xbox and Xbox 360 games would run on the Xbox One, and moving forward, Xbox Series X/S. Along with being able to run older games that were locked to their respective platforms on modern hardware, the program also introduced modern features to some titles, such as support for higher frame rates and resolutions, enhanced texture quality, and support for variable refresh rate displays.
At the time of publishing, 632 Xbox 360 games and 63 Xbox games are now playable on modern consoles. While the company had announced that it was essentially ending the program with a final list of games being added to the catalogue in 2021, Microsoft later announced that it was assembling an entirely new team that would have backwards compatibility and game preservation as its primary focus.
The latest layoffs may have changed these plans, however, and LaChapelle’s departure may have marked the end of the company’s plans to ensure that its older games will remain playable on future platforms.
However, rumors have indicated that Project Helix will, at minimum, remain compatible with Xbox Series X/S games, which indicates that it will at least be capable of running games that were already brought into the backwards compatibility program. Whether or not we will see more of the classics brought over to newer consoles remains unknown for now.
LaChapelle is just one of the casualties from Microsoft’s recent company-wide layoffs, with around 1,600 Xbox employees also having been let go recently. Along with this, the company has also announced that it is letting go of four of its studios – Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, Double Fine Productions, and Compulsion Games. Even third-party studios like IO Interactive haven’t been able to avoid the blast zone.
